Page 17 of Cloaked in Deception (Spencer & Reid Mysteries #4)

Chapter Nine

R ain drove toward the pavements outside Scotland Yard in sheets and pelted the window of Jasper’s office.

His coat and bowler hat hung drenched on the stand, a puddle forming on the floor beneath.

The storm had caught him outdoors, capping off a wasted trip to Marylebone, where Paula Blickson lived on the edge of Regent’s Park.

The upscale residence on Park Crescent was the sort that would have rather seen police officers go down to the servant’s entrance, and the maid who’d answered his knock on the front door scowled when he’d held up his warrant card.

Mr. and Mrs. Blickson were out, he’d been informed, and when she’d shut the door, he’d gritted his teeth at the wasted trip.

Jasper stood at his office window, rubbing his eyes from fatigue and thinking of Leo.

She said she’d report back by the end of the day, and she wasn’t one to not see something through to completion.

He only hoped she would not come here to the Yard.

He’d been a fool to give her that assignment.

Not because she wasn’t capable; he trusted her more than most of the detectives in the CID to gather information and to ask the questions that needed asking.

However, each time he remembered uttering the name Esther Goodwin to her, he cringed.

He hadn’t sent her there because he’d wanted her help; it had been a result of his jealousy.

A spur-of-the-moment, unthinking, and amateur reaction, meant to stop her from returning to the morgue and working alongside Connor Quinn.

Now, Leo would expect to be given more to do.

And when Jasper refused, she would be angry and disappointed.

He’d set himself up for the fall.

A set of knuckles rapped on the frame of the open door to his office. He recognized the knock as Roy Lewis’s.

“How did things go at Sir Eamon’s home?” Jasper asked as he turned.

Rain had plastered the detective sergeant’s clothing to him, and Jasper had to hold back a grin at how much he resembled a cat crawling out of a river.

“Aye, it went about the way it looks.” Lewis shook off each leg, splattering water on the floor.

“Spoke to the footman, Marcus Gibson, like you requested. Pressed him hard, but he swears up and down he didn’t know a thing about the armed men who barreled into the house when he opened the door.

Got knocked on the head and doesn’t remember much after that. ”

“You think he’s telling the truth?”

Lewis nodded, though he didn’t look pleased by it. “He’s honest. So’s the staff. No one knows a thing. But I might have found something with the catering service that was hired.”

Jasper perked up, hopeful.

“One of their servers disappeared during the ruckus, after Miss Spencer was taken,” Lewis explained. “A man by the name of Philip Green. He was hired on last week. I’ve got a constable checking on his address.”

It could be something, Jasper granted, but it also wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary for the server to have left out of fright. Plenty of the guests had done the same.

He briefed Lewis on the body found in Gavin Seabright’s lodgings and how Leo had identified him as one of the masked intruders.

“Gavin’s involved then,” the detective sergeant said. “And now, he’s missing. He’s got to be guilty of something.”

“We turn our focus to finding him tomorrow,” Jasper said, checking the time on his pocket watch. It was nearing six o’clock, and his eyes were burning. Last night’s commotion and lack of sleep were catching up with him.

He took down his coat and hat from the stand, along with his umbrella.

“Grab a pint, guv?” Lewis asked.

Jasper paused. The invitation was a first from his detective sergeant. Lewis had a family in St. Andrew, across the river: a wife and two young sons. Most nights, he was eager to get home to them.

Though he was dead on his feet, Jasper heard himself agreeing.

They jogged across the street to the Rising Sun pub, where inside, a dozen or more officers were having a few beers after hours.

The air was warm and sticky from the rain, and smoky from a peat fire in the hearth.

Jasper bought a couple of pints for them and made his way to a pitted table by the window, where he and Lewis sipped their ale.

Kept at cellar temperature, the cool ale built a layer of sweat on the glasses.

“You said Miss Spencer was at Gavin’s lodgings?” Lewis asked. His attempt to sound casual failed.

“I sent for her, yes,” Jasper said.

“She could’ve identified the man’s body at the morgue.”

Jasper lowered his mug back onto the ring of condensation on the table. His detective sergeant wasn’t wrong. She certainly could have, once he’d had the corpse transported there.

“Waiting might have set me back a few hours. I’m trying to move quickly on this case,” he replied. The excuse was paltry, even to his own ears.

“You don’t think you’re chasing trouble, bringing her in?”

He began to regret accepting Lewis’s invitation for a pint.

“I’m not bringing her in, exactly,” he answered, though sending her to question Esther Goodwin would be seen that way. “I’m being careful.”

Lewis sat back in his chair, his hand still wrapped around his glass. “I’m not against her. She’s useful.”

Jasper waited for his sergeant to tack on a warning. That Jasper was risking his job, or that Leo wasn’t trained as a detective, or some other valid reason to do as Coughlan had insisted—to cease associating with her.

But Lewis stayed quiet.

“I agree,” Jasper said warily after a moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to mention that she had gone to see Martha Seabright’s sister. But he didn’t want to press his luck.

Lewis sat forward, forearms resting on the table, and lowered his voice. “Coughlan’s asked some of the men to keep an eye out. Make sure Miss Spencer’s out of the picture. And if she isn’t, to report back to him.”

The deception shouldn’t have been surprising. Jasper had received plenty of warnings from the chief inspector over the last handful of months to keep Leo at arm’s length when it came to Scotland Yard investigations. But hearing this felt like a wallop to the gut.

“Which men?”

“That I know of? Wiley and Drake.” Lewis took a sip of his beer. “And me.”

Jasper stiffened in his seat. He was now glad he hadn’t confessed about sending Leo to interview Esther Goodwin. “I see.”

“I’m no rat, guv.” Lewis’s lip curled at the thought. “But we both know Wiley is and that Drake was born without a spine. So be careful. And maybe tell Miss Spencer to be too.”

Jasper thanked him with a nod. He appreciated Lewis letting him know he was being spied on. It turned his thoughts to the orange-hatted man who’d been following him the last few weeks and whether he might have anything to do with Coughlan’s initiative.

After finishing their pints, he and Lewis parted ways outside the Rising Sun.

Jasper popped open his umbrella. It had grown dark with the rainstorm, and the lamplighters were out early to light the gas mantles on the posts.

The walk to Charles Street wasn’t far, but in the rain and gusting winds, which caught the silk of his umbrella time and again, it felt like twice the distance.

As he reached the bustling convergence of Northumberland Avenue and Charing Cross Road at Trafalgar Square, he considered stopping at the morgue to see if Leo was there.

The skittering sensation of beetles crawling over his back stopped him.

He was being tailed. Checking over his shoulder, he didn’t see the man from that morning, but the poor lighting and busy pavements could have easily obscured him.

If he was correct and someone was following him, Jasper wouldn’t lead him to the morgue or to Leo.

He kept on, toward Charles Street, and checked behind him again before climbing the steps to his home.

Lampposts showed a few people on the pavements, but Jasper’s eyes didn’t pick out a man in an orange bowler.

Clenching his jaw, he opened the front door with his key and let himself in.

At the warming scents of beef and herbs, and the promise of Mrs. Zhao’s cooking, his stomach grumbled.

“Mister Jasper,” the housekeeper said as she bustled into the front hall. She looked at him aghast as he folded the umbrella and dumped it into the urn next to the door. The muggy air in the Rising Sun hadn’t helped to dry him out.

“I know, I know, Mrs. Zhao. I’ll change before dinner,” he said, starting for the stairs.

“See that you do, but first, Miss Leo is here.”

Jasper stopped with his hand on the knob of the newel post. Mrs. Zhao hadn’t commented on Leo’s absence the last month, but she was an intuitive woman and must have noted something was amiss.

She now lifted one of her graying eyebrows, watching for his reaction.

He tried to keep his expression impassive as a stirring in the center of his chest—and then lower, in his groin—set him back on his heels.

“In the study?” he asked, hopeful Mrs. Zhao hadn’t sensed his jumbled reaction.

She looked to the sitting room entrance. Only then did he notice the room was lit. He frowned.

“Why have you put her in there?”

Mrs. Zhao peered at him as if he’d gone daft. “It was where she wished to wait for you,” she answered, then motioned impatiently for him to join his guest.

Jasper went to the half-closed door and pushed it ajar.

Several rooms in the house were little used, and the sitting room was one of them.

The dated furnishings and decor were kept polished and free of dust, but the room still had a sad, disused air to it.

The last time Jasper had been in there, he’d just been beaten to a pulp by four Spitalfields Angels, who’d warned him to stop investigating the Scotland Yard bombings in May.

He’d been moved from the kitchen to the sitting room sofa, where Leo had tended to his injuries.